


Shattered

by jeolmeoniji



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst, Character Study, I'm sorry this is sad, do the tags even reassure you tbh, kind of, mention of depression, no one dies i promise!!! there's only minhyuk and his thoughts!!, no plot i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-10
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-03-16 10:55:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13634856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeolmeoniji/pseuds/jeolmeoniji
Summary: Minhyuk is looking at his ceiling and he feels nothing; he feels empty.He should study but it feels so pointless.





	Shattered

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this a few months ago and it stayed in my folders, but i really didn't want to let it drown under the dust so i chose to post it!
> 
> it's only a character study (it feels so clever wow). no plot and no relationship, just raw feelings

Minhyuk is laying in his bed, looking at the ceiling. It is so cliché that he thinks he could laugh, but there's nothing left in him to create this bubbly feeling. There's not much at all, really. He just looks at this boring grey ceiling of his room, blinking a few times per minute, as if time around him has stopped. Except it hasn't.

 

He should be doing a billion other things than staying still in his bed. He knows he has papers to hand the next week, midterms to prepare, and work on top of that that he already forgot. Lately, it hasn't been that great. It has been pretty hard, if you ask him. But even if people ask him if he's alright, he says he's fine.

 

Minhyuk is tired, and everyone tells him that. He knows he is, his undereyes are violet, sometimes almost black. His whole face is dull, and when he's not talking, he knows he looks scary. His body is telling him that something is wrong, but Minhyuk doesn't want to listen. He thinks that if he stops, that if he finally tells himself that he should stop the way he lives his life lately, he will break down for real. Not the kind of breakdowns he gets nowadays. A bigger one, one that would leave him even more so broken than he already is. And he's so scared of it that he acts oblivious in front of everything that he knows isn't healthy.

 

Midterms are so soon, and he should be stressed – anxious. Except he isn't right now. It will come later, for sure, right. Minhyuk is looking at his ceiling and he feels nothing; he feels empty. He should study but it feels so pointless. He knows he hasn't been studying well. When there is something he doesn't understand, he acts as if it doesn't exist at all and focuses on stuff in his notebooks that is alright. But doing that, he now realizes he hasn't improved since a few weeks already, and midterms are near, and what he will get as marks will prove to him that he has failed. He has never failed in his life and he's so scared he will fail now.

 

Minhyuk loves what he's studying. Languages have always been what he was the most interested in. Words fascinate him so much, make him feel alive. He couldn't just stop at the korean language. When he was little, he spent his time reading and reading and it has been such a good interest to allow him to do well in school. Growning up a bit, he learnt about foreign languages; he felt frustrated not understanding English right away. It was so much words, right there, wanting to whisper to him stories that he couldn't understand, and little Minhyuk decided to do his best to capture the meanings of all those letters that looked weird but only wanted him to understand their life.

 

Being so curious during his teenage years gave him the image of a studious and mature student who will do well in his studies and his life. Minhyuk believed the people telling him that and believed in his efforts and he was proud of him.

 

But now, he isn't proud of him.

 

He doesn't know where it went wrong.

 

Everyone still believes that he's able of so much, that he's so smart and studious. Except he isn't. Not anymore.

 

The gap between what people thinks of him and what he knows he truly is scares him shitless. He is so scared of the moment everyone will finally see how useless he is, and he doesn't want to see disappointment on their face. We believed in you. You were so promising. Why are you wasting all this away. (He's scared because it means he can't hide from himself anymore, and he needs to face the truth that he already knows but choses to ignore.)

 

Where he used to see a challenge and a new exciting stuff to learn, now Minhyuk sees the emptiness of his brain and how dumb he is. How he isn't as smart as they thought, as he thought, how he's just a clueless student acting as if he can handle and absorb every knowledge in this world. Not knowing something isn't bothering Minhyuk anymore; instead, it scares him to no end. He forgets that it's normal not knowing something, and he feels as if he should have already known when he discovers something new. There's things he's supposed to know, that he has forgotten. There's those things he learnt when he was fifteen, that he remembers bragging about, thinking it was common to memorize everything, and now he knows he doesn't remember those things. He feels like his younger self was so much more promising than his actual self, and he's shameful. It's not the future the fifteen-year-old Minhyuk wanted, but twenty-year-old Minhyuk doesn't know how to follow the right way anymore.

 

Fifteen-year-old Minhyuk thought life was good for him. He had dreams; he had goals; he was sure of what he wanted and he worked towards it. Twenty-year-old Minhyuk still remembers everything wasn't easy at that time – that he was, and still is, a shy and awkward guy, but at fifteen he made efforts to change it. Now, people around him doesn't believe he was shy before, but he doesn't make any more effort to dream and to achieve his goals. But that, no one knows. No one sees clearly. They feel there's a problem with him but since he acts oblivious, they act the same.

 

One day it won't work anymore.

 

A reason why Minhyuk loves languages so much is also because, in another language than his own, he feels as if he discovers an other part of his personality. A Minhyuk that is waiting to live when it's one specific language that Minhyuk decides to speak. When he talks in Korean, he talks fast, sometimes his voice is acute, he stumbles a lot and he's scared to order his hot chocolate at the café. When he talks in English, his voice is deep, calmer, and he's not scared to ask a random person in the street how to go to the museum. When he talks in French or Italian, he talks as if he was humming a melody.

 

Minhyuk is so fascinated with what he discovers of himself with all those different languages. But now he feels so sorry for fifteen-year-old Minhyuk, English-speaker-Minhyuk, French-speaker-Minhyuk and Italian-speaker-Minhyuk. He's locking them away because they are there and they want to improve and to live longer, but twenty-year-old Minhyuk, Korean-speaker-Minhyuk forgot how to do it. And he's scared.

 

He remembers his dream. Beside being polyglot, Minhyuk remembers one dream clearly, because now it lays broken at his feet, and he can't stop staring at the shining pieces of it, remembers how promising it looked when it was still in his hands, when he cherished it so much, lighting his way and making everything feel as if it was so easy. Now his dream is broken and he knows he should fix it because it's still palpitating, hurting but alive, barely.

 

But Minhyuk stays still.

 

Fifteen-year-old Minhyuk swore that he would spend a year abroad to study in Italy. Fifteen-year-old Minhyuk had fallen in love with the language and the country, and had believed that a huge part of his true personality laid in Italian-speaker-Minhyuk. He felt so free and alive wandering through the streets of Roma, but really, anywhere in Italy would be okay for him. His anxious, korean self was forgotten and Minhyuk felt everything was right, at that time.

 

Minhyuk can't forget about this feeling, and he knows he worked hard to achieve this dream, but something along the way lead him to fail.

 

Minhyuk doesn't know what to blame, except himself. He doesn't think of all those separate Minhyuk he saw in him; after all, he is one and only one Minhyuk. Minhyuk knows he's anxious and that he became depressed and even if he wants to blame so much things, at the end, he just feels numb and empty and he doesn't have any strength left to fight, to make it right again, to gather the pieces of his dream, work harder, wait a bit longer but at the end have it all.

 

Minhyuk knows he's selfish and impatient, but he wanted to go study in Italy for a year, and his university told him he couldn't, and the words acted like a hammer crashing onto the dream in his hands with so much force everything shattered into little pieces.

 

Glue to repare his dream was given to him right after the harsh move, though. You can do it, but not next year. If you do that program in two years, you'll be able to study in Italy.

 

Except Minhyuk can't wait two years. There's a yearning and longing feeling eating him alive, a piece of his heart who stayed in Italy and he feels as if he can only be himself and happy if he's at the other end of the globe. He thinks he waited long enough already, five years, and seeing it's not possible when he thought he could touch it after so long, it devastates him to no end.

 

Minhyuk is looking at the grey ceiling, and he feels the sadness and the pain. The hammer keeps hitting his heart, his fucked up brain and his dreams. The grey ceiling becomes darker, and Minhyuk finally closes his eyes, because maybe if he sleeps, everything will be fine.

 

The laugh which didn't come earlier finally passes his lips, but it's a dull, hurt, depressing, bitter laugh, that brings a storm in his head and his chest and does nothing to ease him.

 

He's shattered, and so lost.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> honestly why am i posting this sad stuff on a saturday night
> 
> i would love to know your thoughts about it if you have any <3
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/jeolmeoniji) :)


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